Aspiring sprinters: on your mark, get set, no

By Kurt Wagner and Gabe Taylor

For Santa Clara's sprinters, the finish line is coming all too quickly.

Santa Clara Athletic Director Dan Coonan officially announced the team last Thursday that the university has elected to terminate future funding of the sprinting program. Runners currently on the team will be allowed to continue their careers at Santa Clara if they would like, but no new sprinters will be added to the track team.

The sprinters were first informed of the decision by the sprinting coach Greg Marshall at practice on April 23. Marshall wanted to tell the team of the decision before any of the runners heard rumors from other students at the school.

Coonan was clear that the decision was not made hastily.

"It's not just funding," he said. "It's certainly important for us as an athletics department to be really efficient with the funds that we haveâ?¦.But we don't have a track either."

According to Head Coach Tom Service, sprinters require a track every day of the week, whereas distance runners rely on a track only one or two times a week.

"It concerned us to be offering a sport where we couldn't do for them what we are able to do for the other athletes," said Coonan. Service added that the WCC sponsors the cross-country championship, but is still not tied to sponsoring track.

According to senior JoAnna Gistand, Marshall told the team the news a few weeks earlier at practice so that they would hear from him what had happened before hearing rumors from anyone else at the school.

Following Marshall's announcement, the team's seven sprinters got together to discuss the rest of the season, including their final meet at Sacramento State, which was held last Saturday. Ultimately, the team decided that due to the circumstances, they did not feel totally committed to training for the meet, said sophomore Kiara Herrera. The team elected to end their season early.

"I think we all knew that was going to be our mindset, that none of us could practice under those conditions and that we wouldn't have a good performance," said Herrera. "And then that's even another slap in the face. We couldn't even end our season strong the way we wanted to because we had this over our shoulders."

The team sat in on a brief meeting last Thursday with Coonan and the track coaches and officially received the news they had heard from Marshall a few weeks earlier. For Carrera and Gistand, hearing the finality to the decision gave them closure.

"All of us just got an opportunity to kind of hear it from the horse's mouth and be like, 'OK, this is the end,'" said Gistand. "We all knew what was coming once we saw them in there."

Santa Clara's track team began in 2005 and was originally created to give the cross-country runners a way to stay in shape and remain active throughout the spring. The team adopted sprinters at the request of student athletes who asked to join the team in addition to the long distance runners. Currently, no member of the short-distance team was officially recruited.

For Gistand, the team's lone senior sprinter, the program's development from only a few self-coached runners in 2005 to today's concerted group makes the decision to terminate funding that much more difficult.

"To see the program kind of heading in that direction where it can grow and kind of be fulfilling and then for them to cut it off like that, it was hurtful to see that," she said. "I feel like it was heading in an upward direction."

Most of the team's runners have not yet decided whether or not they will be back to compete next season.

For Herrera, the decision will ultimately come down to whether or not Marshall will be returning. As of now, no coaching decisions have been made. However, Marshall was informed that, at this point, the coaching position is still his.

Regardless of coaching, junior A. Kazimir Brown is planning on participating next season. Brown, who had an impressive sophomore campaign, was unable to run this year due to a hamstring injury.

"Track is very much my love," said Brown. "My mom said whenever I walked, I ran, so I knew I was going to do track. I definitely want to stick it out and finish my senior year."

Service understands the team's disappointment, realizing many of the sprinters were hoping to see short distance evolve in future years. However, the sprinters are now staring at the quickly approaching finish line.

The athletics department has not yet discussed the option of making short-distance track a club sport.

"It's not really in a sense cutting anything, it's just redirecting our focus to where it originally had been," said Coonan.

Contact Kurt or Gabe at jwagner@scu.edu or gtaylor@scu.edu.